Haze Review

Nectar Haze, running through my brain...

However, while the mechanic works well, the implementation of the drug is rather flawed for a couple of reasons. First of all, Nectar manages to make the gameplay way too easy when you're on Mantel's side. Regardless of the difficulty level, it's way too easy to dose yourself up, sit back, and snipe anyone that glows, maintaining the high for multiple sections of a level. This can make these levels boring, but it brings me to my next point, which is that you only get access to Nectar for a scant few stages anyway. Just as you start to feel somewhat of a flow with the Nectar system, you immediately change sides and can no longer inject the substance into your system. In fact, your only use of the drug is to strap a dispenser to a grenade and throw it into a crowd of enemies, immediately making them overdose. If there were more stages where you had access to the drug, or were exposed to the situation, it would seem much more useful. As it stands now, the way it's handled comes across more as a tossed-off afterthought than a key element of the game.

That brings up the third and perhaps largest problem with Nectar: once you've changed sides, you never get a sense that the Mantel troops use the drug against you at all. The fact that you can play dead, steal weapons and perform other rather unique moves as a Promise Hand rebel is supposed to be a way to balance out the incredible benefits of Nectar itself. In fact, the only reason you would need to set traps or perform some of the other abilities that you have should be to balance out the powers given to the troops. Not only do they not appear to be superhuman soldiers with exceptional sniping abilities or able to shrug off large numbers of bullets; instead, they come across like basic grunts with suits of battle armor that are inept with their weapons. All of these issues make Nectar seem like more of a gimmick than a plot device.

Gettin' Jeepy wit' it.

Then again, there are some serious AI issues that crop up within the game regardless of the side you're on, such as the fact that your allies will constantly cross your line of fire. This makes it extremely hard to miss firing on them in the middle of battle; on the rebel side, you'll constantly find yourself reviving your troops because of an errant bullet that found its way into their skull because they were stupid enough to run in front of you as you were firing. You'll even find that your allies will shoot you at times, making it a bit harder to avoid taking damage. Enemies aren't that much smarter, however, because there are plenty of times that you can come up on a soldier that's "hiding" behind cover or standing still in the middle of a battlefield. You can clearly see him and vice versa, but he won't fire until you've shot at him. If you have good aim, you'll eliminate him before he even has a chance to respond.

For all of the single player issues that continually crop up within the game, there is one small shining spot, which is within the multiplayer aspect of the game. Haze supports two player split-screen and up to four player co-op play from any point in the game. As long as a player is invited in thanks to the game's easy to navigate "Friends and Invites" option (which ties into your actual friends list on your XMB), they can join with their friends and fight their way through the story. This can sometimes make single player a bit more interesting, because you can rely much more on your friends to watch your back. Otherwise, you'll find yourself playing with up to 16 people through the three multiplayer modes available in the game: Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Team Assault. While Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch are self-explanatory, Team Assault provides both sides with different objectives that have to be completed, such as blowing up a specific target or reaching a certain area for the rebels while Mantel is tasked with preventing the Promise Hand from gaining any ground. At the end of each multiplayer round, you can receive different merit awards based on which side you were attached to as well as general accolades. They don't translate to anything other than bragging rights for that particular game, so you won't unlock any new weapons or stages, but it is nice to see a mild reward system in the game.

Hatfields vs. Mccoys, South American Style.

That being said, you are going to have to put up with some extremely weak visuals within Haze. There is a litany of problems with the game, from the odd warping of allied soldiers that blink into view suddenly at arbitrary checkpoints to poor texture work. Many of the environmental textures are generic and weak, and you'll frequently see seams or tearing constantly pop up within the game, which distracts from the action onscreen. The worst example of this has to be the visuals for the flamethrower, the Dragon de la Gente, which vomits a horrid cone of supposed flame that looks visually on par with what you'd find from the 386 PC days 15 years ago. The same could be said of the reboot text for Mantel troops, which looks blocky, heavily aliased and nondescript. Not only will you constantly see render passes over levels or character models, you'll find extremely generic faces on some soldiers and odd detail work on others. Duvall, in particular, frequently looks as though his eyes are going to pop out of his skull (Then again, that's when his hands aren't found with objects blatantly running through them, such as a bar in the helicopter during a cutscene.). Even odder is the fact that many cutscenes will cut to a looped section without any dialogue being said, but characters are continually performing their last seen action for a few seconds before the cutscene breaks away to a new gameplay element.

The sound isn't much better off, with many of the problems traceable to the repetitive dialogue that both sides constantly utter. Earlier I mentioned the ridiculous commentary from the Mantel Troops, who frequently blather stupid phrases in the middle of battle. The Promise Hand isn't much better, although they seem stuck with only a few phrases, such as "Remember the Promise" or "Mantel will fall today." Since the soldiers seem constantly stuck on the same phrases ad nauseum, you'll find yourself muting most of the game. Shane will also have this effect upon you, although you might scream at the TV because his lines come across so poorly. At least dosing yourself with Nectar sounds rather interesting, and while the weapons have distinct sounds (such as the loud crack from a pistol versus the rapid pops from the machine guns), the vehicles all seem to recycle the same generic horn sound, which is rather poor.

The Verdict

Haze was touted as a great PS3 exclusive from a developer well versed in first-person shooter mechanics. While Free Radical does have a solid pedigree, Haze does not live up to the company's reputation thanks to a horrible plot, weak gameplay mechanics and visuals that are truly underwhelming. While playing with friends is enjoyable, not even those are enough to bring this lackluster title around.